Hasbro drops lawsuit against firm behind Facebook game Scrabulous

Tuesday 16 December 2008 12.03 EST
First published on Tuesday 16 December 2008 12.03 EST

Games giant Hasbro has dropped its lawsuit against the developers of the hit Facebook game Scrabulous after they made changes that distanced their applications from the original and trademarked Scrabble game.

Hasbro, the world's biggest toy manufacturer, owns the rights to Scrabble in North America and began proceedings to sue RJ Softwares, founded by brothers Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, in July over what it said was "infringement of intellectual properties" over Scrabulous.

The Agarwalla brothers subsequently replaced Scrabulous with a similar game, Wordscraper, and released another new game called Lexulous – both of which Hasbro claimed were further infringements.

However, Hasbro said in a statement late yesterday that it was "pleased that RJ Softwares has made the necessary modifications to Wordscraper and Lexulous ... Based on these modifications, we have agreed to withdraw our lawsuit."

"The agreement provides people in the US and Canada with a choice of different games and also avoids potentially lengthy and costly litigation," said RJ Softwares and Hasbro in a joint statement.

Both Hasbro and rival toy manufacturer Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble outside North America, have now released official online versions of the game for Facebook.

When Scrabulous launched on Facebook last year it was the only application of its type and gained a loyal following. Even the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said he played Scrabulous with his grandparents.

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